LIGO's Eyes-Wide-Open Search for Gravitational Wave Bursts
Laura Cadonati, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The LIGO Burst Analysis group is pursuing searches for unmodeled  
gravitational-wave transients of short duration (< 1 sec) in the  100-2000 Hz 
frequency band.  Plausible sources for this type of  signal are core-collapse 
supernovae or the merger and ring-down  phases of coalescing binary systems.  
In this talk, I will describe  the "eyes-wide-open" approach to the burst 
search, designed to be  sensitive to unpredicted and serendipitous signals, and 
its  implementation both in the LIGO analysis and in collaborative  analysis 
with other gravitational  wave detectors (interferometers  and resonant bars).  
I will give an overview of its challenges and  of the methods used to optimize 
the detection efficiency and to  suppress the false alarm rate with minimal 
assumptions on the  signal's morphology or on the source position.  I will show 
how  these methods have led to the most recent upper limit results and  their 
interpretation and conclude with an outlook for the burst  analysis in the
ongoing, long duration, fifth LIGO science run.